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Incredibles 2 Review

Michael Phillips, Chicago Tribune

When writer-director Brad Bird made "The Incredibles" (2004), the superhero movie genre looked nothing like the overcrowded youth hostel it does today. The "X-Men" movies, the fledgling "Spider-Man" franchise and that was about it. This was pre-"Iron Man." This preceded the entire Marvel Cinematic Universe and the DC Comics afflictions, if you can remember such a time.

Bird's movie, about a family of "Supers" banned by the government from their calling and forced to integrate into unheroic middle-class life, combined elements of James Bond, "Our Man Flint," "The Man (and "The Girl") from "U.N.C.L.E." and a hundred other '60s diversions, while scoring its comic zingers off the notion of an ordinary family of five in extraordinary situations, blessed with superstrength, stretchability, invisibility and speed, among other skills. While that film's escalating destruction eventually crowded out the jokes, audiences dug it. And Michael Giacchino's score was fantastic.

"Incredibles 2" is the 14-years-later sequel, again from Disney-Pixar, again from writer-director Bird. It's just OK, which is somehow a little less than OK, considering the artistic heights the studio has scaled at its peak. Bird should know; his "Ratatouille" (2007) was one of the greats.

Others will disagree, but to me "Incredibles 2" falls short of the level of "Toy Story 2" or "Finding Dory." Those Pixar sequels wholly justified their existence in many satisfying ways, while doing their corporate duty and making hundreds of millions.

This one, most likely, will be plenty big. But Bird's rather strenuous sequel lands more in the camp of "Cars 2" and "Monsters University," mistaking calamity and mayhem for real excitement and wit. While giving Elastigirl, aka Helen Parr, a lot more to do, and offering a few lovely moments within its vibrantly animated "space age" universe (early '60s, but not slavishly so), there's a rote feeling to the story and the complications this time. In a narrative about how to handle your work/life balance to the benefit of both spouses as well as the betterment of your children, "Incredibles 2" seems content to punch the clock and do its job reasonably well.

The movie begins where the first one ended: With a stand-alone action sequence pitting the Incredibles against the Underminer, tearing up the city of Municiberg. Bob and Helen (voiced once again by Craig T. Nelson and Holly Hunter) are soon back to their mundanely happy lives under the superhero relocation program as Bob and Helen Parr, with their 14-year-old daughter Violet (Sarah Vowell), 10-year-old son Dash (Huckleberry Milner) and infant Jack-Jack. The baby's crazy array of superpowers covers everything from "demon baby" transformation to alarming but non-injurious self-combustion to rapid self-cloning. This kid is 17 franchises in the making.

The government ban on superheroics continues. But the Supers have billionaire allies hoping to change the public's mind. The plan put forth by the brother/sister telecommunications company founders, voiced by Bob Odenkirk and Catherine Keener, will relaunch the Incredibles franchise, so to speak. They want Helen/Elastigirl as their frontwoman and public face, while Bob/Mr. Incredible shifts somewhat uneasily into full-on domestic engineer mode. Tilted one way, "Incredibles 2" plays like a metaphor for all the grumbling white men in Hollywood reluctantly ceding power to the overdue women in their midst.

The returning characters include Lucius Best/Frozone (Samuel L. Jackson) and steely, brilliant Edna Mode (voiced by director Bird), who turns out to be a dab hand at babysitting the literal fireball Jack-Jack. The new player roster is headed by an adversary known as Screenslaver. He exerts mind control via digital screens large and small, inducing mass hypnosis and wreaking havoc. An early commuter rail disaster scene pulls a too-close variation on the related scene in the first "Incredibles." The protracted, large-scale climax involves a super-yacht, several ancillary superheroes all along the good/evil spectrum and the unsettling sight of your friendly neighborhood Incredibles turned "bad." Must every franchise pull that one out of the drawer?

The throwaway domestic bits are the best: Jack-Jack double-patting his father awake, when Bob conks out during the bedtime storybook, for example. That said, a faint, musty air of "Mr. Mom"-era gender politics underpins much of this material. At this point in the superhero-clogged drains of our moviegoing psyches, it's too bad Bird didn't come up with something more arresting, or funnier. "Incredibles 2" is content to punch the clock and stick to straight, bombastic action mode. In that mode, composer Giacchino's music is the most successful element, running nimble, beautifully orchestrated variations on themes that feel familiar in the best ways while retaining their spark. The animation is bright and visually dynamic. The script, well ... if the title were "Satisfactories 2," it'd be about right.